Lover's Knot (26 page)

She switched tactics again. “On that map at the park, the farm closest to the Spurlock place was owned by somebody named Cade. Any chance there are Cades still living?”

“Well, that’s something I can tell you.”

She smiled in encouragement. “Yes?”

“The original generation, they’re all gone. But their young ’uns are still around. Puss Cade? She was Leah’s best friend growing up. See, when Leah and Jesse got married, they took over the Blackburn place, so it was Leah’s home-place where they settled, not his. The Cade farm was right in between the old Spurlock place and the Blackburn place. Puss got married and had a daughter name of Prudence. Prudence Baker, I think. She lived over Flint Hill way. Probably still does. She don’t come to these meetings.”

Kendra felt a splinter of victory. “I’ll see if I can find her.”

“Some folks got relocated over that way. Her mama was one of them, her and the whole Cade family.”

“Well, maybe Puss told her daughter something about Leah.”

“Might have at that, seeing’s they was that close and all.”

“Can you tell me anything else about Leah, Aubrey? Anything you remember?”

“Oh, I remember a lot.”

She was sure he did, a lot more than he’d told her so far. She decided to go for background, something small she thought he might part with. “Why did Jesse and Leah live on
her
family’s farm? I didn’t see any Spurlocks embroidered on Leah’s quilt, or any other ones besides Jesse and Leah on the list the ranger gave me.”

“That’s easy. The Spurlocks, now, they were one of the prime families in Lock Hollow. They had a lot of good land, a house they could be proud of. The Blackburns were the other family who did just fine, come what may. The Spurlocks, though, they had this problem. See, they was always giving birth to girls. More girl Spurlocks than you can imagine. Jesse finally come along just about when everybody thought the name was going to die out for good, and Essie and Grover Spurlock, well, they was as happy as they could ever be. Then Grover died, and Essie remarried a man name of Collins.”

Kendra remembered the name Collins on the ranger’s list and the quilt. “I see.”

“So Jesse’s mother and her new husband, they kept the old Spurlock place. Jesse would have got it eventually, you know. But when he married Leah, she and Birdie were all alone on account of their parents dying of typhoid fever.”

“So I guess it only made sense for Jesse to move to the Blackburn place and farm Leah’s land while his mother and stepfather were still alive.”

“That’s right. Leah’s folks left the place to her. See, they knew if they did, Leah would always take care of Birdie.”

“You said Birdie was disabled?”

“Polio. You young folks just don’t know how it was back then.”

“We do take immunity for granted.”

“You go someplace like India or Indonesia, you still see it.”

She was reminded yet again that she was dealing with a man who was well read and intelligent.

“I like the story so far,” she said. “What were Leah and Jesse like? And Birdie, too?”

He crossed his arms over his suspenders and shut his eyes. At first she thought he was telling her he was tired. Then he smiled. “I lived as close by as anyone, you know. I saw a lot in those days.”

“I’m listening.”

He smiled again. “Good, ’cause I’m about to start talking.”

A
year after her marriage to Jesse, Leah had two sorrows. The first was that she hadn’t gotten pregnant. From the moment of Jesse’s proposal, she had hoped not to have a baby right away. As she’d provided nursing care to her neighbors, she had seen how too many children in a family tired a woman. She hoped to be blessed with only the number she and Jesse could love and care for. But when a year had passed and there was no sign of a child, she began to worry.

The second sorrow was more insidious and even less likely to be favorably resolved. The decision to build a park in Virginia’s mountains seemed to be moving forward at a rapid rate, despite all the reasons against it.

The country was in a terrible state. In cities, people stood in breadlines. Millionaires jumped from skyscraper windows, and widows sold apples on street corners. In some places families lived in caves or sewer pipes. President Hoover, who had built a private presidential retreat not far away on the Rapidan River, had been voted out of office, and the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seemed more determined to improve the lot of ordinary people. But how would giving people’s homes to the deer and buzzards help anyone?

Some families who thought the park would happen also believed they would be allowed to continue living on their land afterward. There had been assurances along the way. And who would force a thousand people from their homes just so trees could grow untended?

Still, the evidence that their futures and farms were at stake was mounting. Some mountain people had simply packed and gone, accepting the inevitable. The amount of acreage for the park had been reduced, as expected, but Lock Hollow was still just inside its boundaries. The residents could no longer ignore the fact that their lives were about to change forever.

In February, Leah was helping Birdie prepare blackberry pies when Jesse stalked in, ushering in the chill of winter with him. The year hadn’t brought prosperity to anyone, but that summer, as if in sympathy, the blackberries had doubled their yield. One of these pies was to go to an old woman who lived alone on the next ridge.

“Now they’ve gone and done it. Really done it.”

Leah dried her hands on her apron and went to take Jesse’s coat and the bundle he carried. He had been gone all day, helping the Cades repair their roof, the victim of a tree that had toppled in the last storm.

“There’s snow coming,” she said. “I can feel it in the air. I’m glad you made it home before it started.”

“I wish I hadn’t gone at all.”

“What are you talking about? Who did what?”

Jesse sat on the kitchen stool and removed his boots—boots that needed replacing, like almost every item of clothing he owned. In better times Leah was paid for tending the sick and for the remedies she made using her mother’s recipes. Jesse sold milled lumber, and the shakes and shingles he hewed, along with corn and the exceptional apples that grew in the Blackburn and Spurlock orchards. Even Birdie made quilts to sell at Grayling’s Store.

But these days people were making do with whatever they had, and the past summer Jesse had quietly sold his corn crop to a “stiller” in Free State Hollow. Even though Prohibition had finally ended, corn liquor was still the most profitable use of the crop and the cheapest way to ship it out of the mountains.

He finished removing his boots. “The government’s saying they won’t accept title to our land from the State of Virginia ’less all of us are off it. So they’ll be coming after us now, every last one of us.”

Leah looked at Birdie, who was staring out the window as if the outline of leaf-bare trees against the darkening sky was more important than the conversation.

“Jesse—” Leah lowered her voice “—what about the lawsuits? Don’t the courts have to decide whether they can do it or not?”

“You’re not listening. They’ve just gone and done it!”

“Are we really going to have to leave? Can they make us?”

“They try, there’ll be some fighting up here. You know there will.”

“Not you.” She put her hand on his arm. “What would that accomplish except separate you from your land
and
your family?”

“They say they’ll be coming right quick to look at each farm in the holler and see what they owe for it. You think they can pay enough for what this holler means to us? My family’s been here for nigh two hundred years. And yours nearly as long. These mountains belong to us. We bought what we own with the blood of the people went before us.”

Leah felt that, too. It was disgraceful that the State of Virginia could walk into their homes, calculate their worth and pretend to pay them enough to start again somewhere else. How did you pack up generations of memories, friendships with neighbors, a way of life that had kept their stomachs full and houses warm while the rest of the nation suffered?

“You ought to see what they’re saying about us out there.” Jesse got to his feet, and started toward the living room and the warmth of the wood stove. “They’re saying we’re nothing but a bunch of ignorant hillbillies, that not a one of us won’t be better off if the government roots us out of here. We’ll go down below, get an education, learn how to eat with a fork, and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ As if we don’t do that now! They say someday we’ll realize how lucky we are this happened.”

Leah followed him. “I don’t hardly know a single family anywhere that wouldn’t send their young ’uns to school every single day if they could.”

“Not according to the newspapers. They say there ain’t enough schools here because we don’t want ’em. Don’t matter how many times we’ve asked the county and the churches to help. Don’t matter how many times they’ve had to say no because they don’t have the money to build more.”

“Why do people say those things?”

Instead of warming his hands over the stove on the hearth, Jesse reached for the German Luger on the fireplace mantel. It had been his father’s, a memento of service in the Great War, and Jesse had placed it there for their protection when he moved in, along with his father’s medals and a German spiked helmet. The collection seemed at home now, a part of Jesse’s past, but seeing the pistol in his hands when he was angry made her uneasy.

He sighted down the barrel, pointing it toward a window. “To make it easier to force us out of here, that’s why. People in the cities think too hard, they might sympathize and work to stop the park. This way, nobody thinks twice. They think they’ll be doing us a favor.”

“If this happens, where will we go?”

“Aubrey’s coming by after supper.”

Aubrey Grayling had been Jesse’s constant companion since childhood. Even now that Jesse was married, Aubrey was a frequent visitor. Leah liked him well enough, although sometimes, like any new bride, she resented the time her husband spent with his friend. But Aubrey was good-natured and smart. When he was younger, he’d been sent to live with family in Luray to receive more education, and he was always reading.

Leah put her hand on Jesse’s shoulder, and he let the gun drop to his side. “You let us finish these pies, then we’ll get supper on the table. You go and put your feet up a while.”

Leah watched as he replaced the gun and collapsed into the rocking chair. Judging from his expression, his burden was every bit as heavy as when he’d walked through the door.

“He’s worried,” she told Birdie in a low tone. “And that worries
me
.”

“Jesse won’t allow anything bad to happen,” Birdie said. “God sent him to take care of us.”

“You ever think maybe God sent him to help us pack up and move?”

“If that’s His will. But it ain’t.”

Leah wished her faith was as strong as her sister’s, but she was worried. She had only rarely ventured out of the mountains. Her mother had hoped to send her to Hagerstown, Maryland, for nurse’s training, but the Depression had made it difficult to put money aside. Then Flossie’s death had made it impossible. Leah had yearned for more education, but even more, for a chance to see a little of the world.

For a moment she imagined what life might be like somewhere else. Jesse was smart and a hard worker. He could get a job, even if the government didn’t pay them enough to buy another farm. Perhaps down below she could train as a nurse after all. Together, couldn’t the three of them have a good life? Surely they would make friends, become part of whatever community they went to. If they were ever blessed with children, it would be easier to educate them.

“It would be a different life,” Leah said. “But maybe not a worse one.”

“You oughtn’t to let Jesse hear you talk that way,” Birdie said. “He’s planning to stay here, and he don’t need you a-tugging at him and saying different.”

Leah wondered if her sister was right. But if they were forced from their home, they would need to prepare. And preparation meant not only packing and taking what they could, but finding something good about the situation to hang on to.

As if Birdie were trying to cheer Jesse, supper was even better than usual. The corn bread was laced with cracklings, and the poke salit was cooked with onions from the root cellar as well as side meat. The blackberry pie was topped with heavy cream and served with a flourish.

“You feed us so good, Birdie girl, no one’d ever know there was a problem in the world,” Jesse told her.

Birdie smiled. “As hard as you work, Jesse, you need to eat well and often.”

Leah knew Birdie was just trying to make Jesse feel better, but the compliment annoyed her. She helped her sister clean the kitchen and wash the dishes, going out to the pump twice for pitchers of fresh water. In truth, she went out to see the sky and to look for more signs of snow. She could smell and taste it in the air. The hair on her arms stood up in anticipation, and she could feel her cheeks and nose turning red.

She hadn’t heard the door open and close, but by the time she registered footsteps, she felt Jesse’s arms slip around her. “You really need all that water just for a few dishes?”

She leaned against him, happy for the first time since he’d come home that evening. “We did all that baking before supper. So you could eat
well
and
often
.”

He chuckled and his arms tightened around her. “That’s not the only thing a man has to do
well
and
often
.”

“I can surely testify to the
often
part. You just cain’t seem to leave me alone, Jesse Spurlock.”

He laughed again and turned her to face him. “And would you want me to?”

She kissed him in answer. “As for
well?
” She stepped back to see his face in the moonlight. “I guess that all depends on how much of a hurry you’re in.”

“That’s why I aim to do it often. So I won’t be in a hurry.”

“Now I see how it is.” She smiled; then she sobered. “I just wish all that well and often would bring us a baby.”

“Don’t you go getting worried about it. It’s a gift not to be burdened with a young ’un right off in a marriage. And with this problem with the park waiting just around the corner…”

She wished she hadn’t said anything. She had ruined the moment.

“I just want you to know that whatever happens,” she said, “we have each other, Jesse. We can face anything together. We can go anywhere and make us a good life.”

“This is where I belong.” There was no room to argue. She heard absolute conviction in his voice.

There was no
time
to argue, either. A light appeared just beyond their barn, and as they watched, it moved closer.

“That will be Aubrey,” Jesse said. “He ate supper with the Cades.”

“He’s spending a lot of time over there. Do you reckon he has his eye on Mary?” Mary was Puss’s younger sister. Puss herself was cleaning rooms at the Skyland resort now that her brother in Stanardsville had remarried. She got one day a week to herself, but it wasn’t enough time to come home.

“He hasn’t said anything about Mary,” Jesse said. “More likely he wants it to look that way, so he’ll get a good meal now and then.”

Aubrey’s mother had passed on two years before. Aubrey was always looking for a home-cooked meal, and Birdie fed him regularly. Sometimes Leah wondered if Aubrey might settle down with Birdie just for her cooking. That way he and Jesse would be brothers-in-law, and he could spend even more time with her husband. So far, though, neither Aubrey nor Birdie seemed interested in that prospect.

Leah went inside and left Jesse to greet his friend. She poured water into the dishpan and used it to rinse the last of the dishes. Birdie was in the bedroom the two of them had shared as girls, most likely piecing another quilt.

Leah dried what she’d rinsed and had finished setting the kitchen to rights by the time Aubrey appeared with Jesse.

Aubrey removed his hat. “I reckon you’re doing well?”

“Nice to see you, Aubrey. Let me take your hat and coat.” She did, and hung them on a peg. “We just finished some blackberry pie. Would you like a slice?”

He refused, claiming he’d eaten two helpings of apple cobbler at the Cades’.